Double Labyrinth after Richard Dunn (YouTube documentary)

This short film captures the creative insights and approaches that inform a major composition of Bryn Harrison, written in memory of the work and life of senior Australian visual artist Richard Dunn. Richard was an incredibly powerful thinker who came to be associated and involved with ELISION in recent years. Commissioned by Suzanne Davies, 'Double Labyrinth after Richard Dunn' is a twenty minute variable work; this version is scored for the Swedish Nyckelharpa with cello (one player), recorders, harp, percussion and contrabass. Prior to the world premiere, ELISION musicians spent four days in a creative development with Bryn Harrison exploring the sonic potentials of his scored labyrinths- a notation directly drawn from and inspired by Richard's visual creations bearing the same title. Subsequent filming of the rehearsal and associated interviews took place within the amazing acoustic and gorgeous design of the Melbourne Recital Centre.

Visual artist Richard Dunn has been acclaimed for his use of 'paradox, metaphor, humour, codification and contrast between minimal form and complexity of content'. These creative strategies find strong sonic expressive parallels in the music of Bryn Harrison, a composer who first wrote for ELISION in 2009, 'Surface forms (repeating)'. The film displays the thinking behind the composition of 'Double Labyrinth', our approaches as ELISION musicians to choosing pertinent techniques and sounds, the inspiration composer Bryn Harrison has drawn from Richard's work which provides a rich seed bed of complex forms and topographical structures for music notation, and the visuals of the mechanisms of instruments themselves- such as the Nyckelharpa.